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July 19, 2006
The Chicago Way
There's been a lot of noise lately about "proportional response" in Israel's counterattack against Hizb'allah, after Hizb'allah raided into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers, then begin firing rockets at Israeli towns. I don't get the idea; I really don't. I suppose I just don't understand what a "proportional response" is? Let's explore.
A "proportional response" could mean "doing just what your enemy did". But if Israel were to go into Lebanon and capture enemy fighters, and then start bombing enemy civilians (even hospitals and mosques), they would be excoriated as being monsters and war criminals. Indeed, they are being charged exactly thus for the incidental damage from fighting Hizb'allah in response to such actions. (Example: Hizb'allah moves its rockets in trucks that Israel is bombing; to protect the rockets, Hizb'allah mixes those trucks in with convoys of civilian cars and buses; Israel attacks the trucks anyway, and the media reports this as Israel bombing a civilian convoy and everyone starts demanding Israel cease attacking civilians.)
A "proportional response" could mean "doing just what is needed to stop the enemy from doing what he was doing and no more". That has two big problems. The first is that this would likely imply a heavier assault than Israel is currently engaged in, and so is likely not what the worriers mean. The second is that such a formulation leads only to more casualties down the line. In fact, this has been the pattern in Israeli/Arab relations since Oslo: the Arabs attack Israeli civilians mercilessly; the Israelis respond by counter-battery fire against Arab rocket-launchers or artillery, or killing Arab leaders, or capturing Arab fighters, or some similar means; the Arabs scream "war crime" and beg the international community to force a cease-fire; the cease-fire comes; Arabs, having taken a drubbing, re-arm and recruit and train new fighters; go back to step one. In other words, the problem is never actually solved, only kicked down the road to come back again in a few weeks, months or (in rare cases) years. Is it really the moral position to insist that problems that lead to fighting never get solved? I cannot see how.
A "proportional response" could mean "just sitting there and taking it", because being more powerful than your enemy ipso facto removes any legitimacy you have to defend yourself. I suspect that this is what most Europeans, at least, mean by "proportional response." That is so against human nature as to beggar belief, but then Europe has spent a long time (as has the the US, really) in virtually complete peace and security, and maybe a lot of people have just forgotten what it means to be at the mercy of an implacable enemy.
A "proportional response" could mean "doing what other countries would do in a similar situation", but I suspect it doesn't. After all, look at what France did in the Ivory Coast (a few French "peace keepers" were killed, so France destroyed the government's air force and imposed de facto French control over the entire population and economy) or what Spain would do if the Basques were to start firing long-range rockets from France into Spain. (Yes, I know there are mountains in the way. It's a thought experiment.) If Israel's response were along those lines, it would really look more like the Chicago way, which is really the only way to settle a problem where one side's minimum condition is the extermination of the other:
You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.
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